From the Chippewa Herald last week: The newspaper's website (Chippewa.com) will now allow readers' comments to go up automatically, without someone approving them first. Story here.

Good move, Chip. While I can completely see why newspeople have the impulse to approve comments before posting them on their website, that's just not how the internet works. It's silly to try to control online communication top-down. Comments will still be monitored, but by the crowd of readers, who can flag something if it's offensive. I'm not sure what other local papers' policies are.

Here you can comment all willy-nilly, but blog posts like this one have to get approved first. Speaking of which, let's see some splashes in this here Community Pool!